


Red rose, white lily

by Kestrad



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, Outer Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2011-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:41:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrad/pseuds/Kestrad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sweden and Finland reunite, far away from the earth they left behind. Their story is not a happy one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red rose, white lily

The new planet has global temperatures on average ten degrees colder than the earth’s.

That’s just fine for Sweden. His people thrived for centuries in the cold, after all.

*

The colony expands to fill the continent in just over half a century. Admittedly it’s a small one, but it’s still an accomplishment and Sweden celebrates accordingly. He sends out a note—a single line—via a network he’s no longer sure works, to addresses that may no longer be connected.

Several replies trickle in, similarly short, cautiously congratulatory.

The address he wants to hear from most is silent.

*

His people are forgetting.

Like his days as a Viking, like the time he ruled his own corner of the earth, time swallows his past in an inexorable tide, turning his final greatest voyage into a distant dream. History is better documented this time around, but already his people cannot comprehend a time when the world contained more than one language, more than one country, crammed next to each other like so many herrings into one single jar.

Sweden wakes up some mornings with the image of a man with shining blue eyes and wild gold hair and mouth set in a permanent grin and remembers someone just like that was important to him once, but no matter how hard Sweden tries he just can’t quite remember the man’s name.

Other mornings he wakes up from dreams of lilac eyes and gentle caresses and wishes nothing more than to forget.

*

There are rows and rows of roses in Sweden’s garden.

They’re a parting gift from when he left the earth, from a nation who chose to stay. A nation who’d dropped roses off with each departing ship. “Roses, like love, are meant to be given away,” he’d said with a smile and a wink, though his face was weary and his eyes had lost their shine.

Sweden had accepted the flowers without comment. Without asking who there could possibly be in the cold void of space for him to give roses to.

The flowers thrive in the soil of the foreign planet, scattering blood-red petals into the blowing wind.

*

One hundred years in, a spaceship requests permission to land. The make is old—one Sweden vaguely recognizes from the diaspora from earth a century ago. There’s probably a nation on board. Sweden wonders if it’s one he once knew or if it’s a new one. He wonders if he’ll be able to tell the difference.

He turns on his video screen. Starry violet eyes made serious by age bloom before him, and a delicate mouth that falls open in shock before rearranging itself into a soft smile. A smile Sweden has spent the better part of a millennium looking for something beautiful enough to compare it to. A smile he thought he would never see again.

Permission is granted immediately. Sweden sees to that.

Just one hour later a small, slender man rushes into the taller one’s arms as their respective people look on bemusedly. Sweden clings onto Finland like a drowning man to driftwood, silently wondering if a god he stopped believing in long ago exists after all.

*

Finland builds his house on the other side of the planet. Sweden visits often whenever he can, dropping off supplies.

He arrives one day to find Finland in his garden, planting row upon row of snow-white flowers. Lily of the valley. Returning happiness.

Wordlessly, Finland hands Sweden a few.

Sweden plants them in his own garden when he returns home, beside the rows of roses, a field of snow for the blood-red petals to fall.

*

Finland is silent. Like the sound of ages transpiring. The sound of years trickling by. Sweden and Finland sit side by side in silence, waiting for—for what? Perhaps waiting for noise. For someone to break the quiet that hangs between them.

Was Finland always so silent? Sweden’s forgotten too many things during a century separated by too many miles to count.

He realizes too late he’s forgotten something else important.

Strangers breed distrust. Distrust breeds hate.

And one hundred years apart turns the best of friends into strangers.

*

One thousand years is the time they spent on their bond.

It takes one hundred and ten to break it.

A century to forget. Eight years for tenuous reconciliation. Two years for the tension to boil over.

“Sve…remember when—?”

Remember when you I held you? Remember when we lived, side by side, and even though the world was small we were content? Remember when we were happy? Sweden finishes Finland’s question for him a thousand times and never finds the answer.

Finland is on his knees, blood flowing freely from a gash in his stomach. He doesn’t even bother trying to staunch the wound. Sweden brings his bloody knife up.

“I remember.”

The knife plunges into Finland’s neck and the small body crumples to the ground. Sweden gently lays it out, smoothes the hair, closes those violet eyes.

Sometime tonight they’ll open again. Tomorrow it’ll be Finland’s turn with the knife. Finland’s turn for revenge. Sweden’s turn to die. They’ll continue until neither of them have the people or the strength for the cycle anymore.

Then perhaps one day Sweden can bring Finland roses and apologize. Perhaps one day Finland can hand Sweden lilies without conveying a lie.

Or perhaps they’ll both fade away completely, and in another thousand years only the flowers thriving on a planet that is not theirs will hint there ever was a story to tell.

Sweden waits, gently cradling his lover’s body, waits to see which ending it will be.


End file.
